Elementary, My Dear Holmes

An environmental ethicist has won the coveted Templeton Prize, a $1 million award for raising awareness about how science can lead to discoveries about spirituality. Holmes Rolston III, a philosophy professor at Colorado State University and the man known as the father of environmental ethics, won the prize for his explorations of the relationships among religion, ethics, genetics, and evolutionary biology. Rolston, a self-described radical environmentalist, has criticized the Bush administration for focusing on Iraq at the expense of what he says is the larger problem of global warming, and he has called for an international effort "to figure out humankind's appropriate place on the planet and to use the Earth's valuable resources with care and concern." He plans to use the prize -- the most lucrative one in the world awarded to an individual -- to fund a new professorship in science and religion at Davidson College in North Carolina.